


lux aeterna

by Red



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Films, Friendship, Gen, Isolation, Platonic Cuddling, unhealthy friendship at the moment but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1821793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/pseuds/Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank's given him silence, it seems a small enough gift to give him this, a single night in a movie theater. </p><p>(or: 1968 was a great year in film <i>and</i> flu and don't worry, Hank does get <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i> on Betamax for Christmas 1980)</p>
            </blockquote>





	lux aeterna

**Author's Note:**

> Done for [this prompt](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/11912.html?thread=23018632#t23018632) on the XMFC kinkmeme. Thanks so, anon!

It was five years the school was open, and it’s been that long again now it hasn’t.

Most of ‘68, he can’t recall. It was autumn and the cellars near empty when Hank made the first batch of altered serum, early winter when the voices stopped clawing and sobriety became almost tolerable. 

When it wasn’t, at least he didn’t have to overhear Hank’s judgment and concern. Slowly, they stopped avoiding one another. 

Charles can remember far more from that time on. He started taking a passing interest once more in whatever Hank got up to in the labs, started trying to mend what remained of their friendship. It was in those last weeks of December when, for the first and only time that year, he left the mansion. Hank drove them into town. There’s little of the ride he still remembers, only--his knuckles white on the cane, sure the serum would fail but incapable of denying Hank such a trivial gift. 

The theater had been nearly empty, a matinee of a film out for months. He hadn’t needed the flask at all, not that Hank would’ve noticed, transfixed as he was by the screen. 

Charles very nearly became so himself. There was a time when movies had been distasteful to him, the lack of mental voices unnerving, but by then that was nothing but welcome. For half-hour stretches, there wasn’t any dialogue, regardless. Initially the plot escaped him, the first twenty minutes dedicated entirely to men in ape suits.

And by the time they got to the interesting bit, by intermission, he’d been distracted. His head had started pounding, hard enough he could scarcely follow the moves of all the players. He had tried sipping at the flask, covert enough during a scene involving murderous computers for Hank not to notice. 

It didn’t help. His stomach had started to tense and recoil, he became completely preoccupied with swallowing back saliva. He hadn’t known, then, what was wrong. Perhaps he’d forgot to eat, perhaps he was catching something. Either way, Hank had remained oblivious there in the theater, apparently consumed by the film. Charles made it another forty minutes that way, glancing occasionally at Hank, at the reflection of the projector’s light in his glasses. Clammy and nauseated, he hadn’t been able to pull Hank away, hadn’t been ill enough to think Hank wouldn’t follow if he attempted to escape alone. He had just sat there gripping the armrest, willing himself to make it to the end credits, but by the time the screen was all bright abstract light and high-pitched humming the issue became forced. 

Thankfully, he’s managed to forget all the finer points by now--how Hank apologized to the staff, or how he got to the bathroom. But there’s no erasing the memory of the moment when he stood, managed a few halting steps down the row, and vomited all down his front and the floor. 

In the cramped stall, Hank hovered behind him, offering apologies and wet paper towels, and when Charles claimed he was well enough to get home Hank took him at his word. 

By the end of the drive back, the car reeked of sick. They never got around to cleaning it entirely, it languishes still in the back of the garages. Charles had leaned heavily on Hank, weight suspended between the cane and him. Once he was finally in bed, Hank had run downstairs, only to return briefly with a thermometer, two syringes, and wine Charles would soon find to be mostly water. 

“I don’t believe it’s the serum. We’d have seen this much sooner, if it were,” Hank had babbled to him, scrubbing at his arm to draw blood. “Your immune system--just the time you’ve spent here alone, it would be compromised enough, but with your condition and the probable side effects, I should have been more--” Hank had prattled on and on, and Charles had just sipped at the vaguely-alcoholic water. 

Hank eventually injected him with a small dose of the serum, and Charles let him take his temperature. The next words he managed to pick out of Hank’s rambling had been, “It’s probably the flu,” and it’s still embarrassing to this day how hard he struggled to sit. Trying pathetically to save some imaginary part of his dignity, as if Hank hadn’t already cleaned his shit up countless times, literally and metaphorically. 

“You needn’t play nurse any longer,” he remembers saying, and not much else from that moment on. It was insulting Hank would stay with him, but at the same time... Inevitable, Charles still thinks. 

Those first nights Hank slept in his bed, Charles spent the lot of it vomiting and sweating the linens through. Hank spent it cleaning him up, getting him water, handling his shots, and never getting sick himself--likely because he had gone without serum, trusting in the immunity of his mutant form. Though Charles had been out of his mind with flu, he can still remember so much: the comfort of simple affection, the singular pleasure of brushing through fur. 

The new year had passed, and he became well enough to care for himself. Hank had returned to his labs, his projects, his odd hours spent alone. 

But whenever he remembered to sleep, when their schedules coincided, there remained--this. 

“It’s complete madness,” Charles whispers. 

The mansion is silent around them. He can’t tell if their interloper is sleeping or awake, if he’s even here at all. Hank was skittish crawling into his bed tonight, but he showed up all the same. Mumbling, he shifts as if to sit up, and Charles wraps an arm around his back. 

It doesn’t take powers to know Hank is only here because it's the one way they're able sleep in the pressure of the mansion’s space. He’s only ignoring his shyness and misgivings about Logan because he’s the only person here who can fly a plane, because he knows the coming days will be long, because he needs the rest.

Gently, Charles smooths down the coarse fur of Hank’s arm. “But we’ll do it anyway, right? Don’t mind me.” 

Hank settles, moving to rest his head against Charles’s shoulder, and sighs. It’s a heavy sound whenever he’s like this. Charles smiles sadly in the darkness. 

_Get some sleep, my friend_ , he thinks, safe in his own mind, and he listens as Hank snores softly on.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A New Phase](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8063464) by [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris)




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